


The Shirt Off His Back

by Hatterized



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode 9.08 Spoilers, M/M, Pining, Smitten Negan, minor Rick/Michonne but they're not the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 00:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16753972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatterized/pseuds/Hatterized
Summary: Negan has plans after he escapes from his cell.





	The Shirt Off His Back

He goes straight for Rick’s house, the memory of it etched in his mind from days gone by when he’d walked these streets like a goddamned king.

Alexandria is a lot different than he remembers, and it makes sense- eight years gone, plus he'd bombed the hell out of the place. It’s a good thing it’s pitch black out and everyone’s looking the other way, or else he’d probably have a barrage of bullets in his back by now. He wanders the alleys between houses praying he isn’t noticed until he spots it.

It’s different now, but it’s unmistakably the Grimes’ house. There’s a little hand-painted sign adorning the front porch in Judith’s clumsy-but-learning handwriting: _Grimes_.

 _Thanks a fucking heap, kid_ , Negan thinks as he climbs the steps with a cowed sort of stealthiness that he’s never had to use here before.

Immediately when he steps inside and closes the front door behind him, he sees it hanging on the wall to the left. It takes him a minute to figure it out- the triangle of blue planks that look like they were pulled off a porch, the brighter blue handprints immortalized there, one tiny and one larger, but not big enough to be Rick’s hand. It looks old- the wood weathered and the handprints a little faded like the paint has seen some wear.

 _Oh_ , he realizes with a pulse of sorrow. _Carl_.

The sadness comes laden heavy with guilt, because he remembers the last conversation he had with Rick. How when he’d brought up Carl’s name, Rick had gotten his hackles up, hurt seeping out of every pore. _Don’t say his name._

He deserved that. God, he fucking deserved that, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t give to take it all back, every goddamned shitty thing he’d ever said to Rick about his son. He’d been heartless, _cruel_ , digging his fingers into open wounds just to feel like he had any power at all. He doesn’t like thinking of how many times he’d gutted Rick with his words, the constant guilt and pain Rick must have felt whenever he passed Carl’s handprint.

“I’m fucking sorry,” he chokes out in a whisper. It’s partially to Carl for getting pulled away so soon and constantly dredging up his memory just to cause his father pain, and partially to Rick for…well, for fucking everything.

His footsteps feel a little heavier as he creeps up the staircase. All the doors are closed, and the first one he peeks into isn’t the one he’s looking for.

Small bed in the corner, toys on the floor, children’s books stacked haphazardly on a bookshelf against the far wall. RJ’s room.

He’s never seen Rick and Michonne’s son, and somehow that seems fitting. It would feel utterly profane for him to meet RJ when Rick himself never got to.

Beside it is Judith’s room. He gives a furtive peek inside but gets sidetracked by the drawing above her bed.

Five people standing in a row in a garden, a child’s impossible dream come to life. _Dad, Mom, RJ, Me, Carl._ Rick’s hair is longer in the drawing, how it used to be when Negan first met him, and Negan’s surprised Judith can remember him like that. Surprised she remembers Carl at all.

Above their heads, hanging in the sky are the words that make Negan ache: _My family is always with me._

Negan closes the door, breathing out hard through his nose to combat the thickness in his throat.

One room left, the whole reason he came here. He shuts himself inside and then stands there a long moment, taking it in.

There’s a little collection of cat statues atop the dresser- a large one made of wire, smaller ones made of plastic and porelain and glass. Negan would bet his left shoe that they’re Michonne’s- Rick struck him as a dog person. There are two colorful portraits hanging above them, one of a woman with a ponytail and a serious face, and one of a woman with long, dark hair and kind eyes. They’re both signed by someone named _Anne_ \- whoever the hell that is. He can only assume the women have some significance to Rick and Michonne for them to be on the wall, but he doesn’t recognize them.

The rest of the bedroom is a lived-in sort of untidy. There’s a pile of books on the bedside table and the bed is unmade, and it strikes Negan that it’s a bed for two. He wonders if Michonne ever looks hatefully at that empty space beside her. He goes for the closet first, finding it mostly full of Michonne’s clothes- pants and tank tops on hangers, jackets for the winter months. Shoved in the very back is, much to his surprise, his own leather jacket, looking very much lonely and unworn. He pulls it out and tosses it onto the bed, chewing the inside of his lip.

 _I know you’re fucking in here_ , he thinks, _she wears you all the goddamned time._

He finds what he’s looking for in the dresser, folded neatly like they’re items of immeasurable worth instead of worn button-ups that have seen better days. It feels like sacrilege to touch them, but when has Negan ever been particularly reverent?

He picks one from the bottom of the drawer, careful not to upend the whole stack onto the floor as he draws it out. It’s one he’s seen Rick wear, and that’s the important part- a medium blue that brought out his eyes, thin stripes intersecting to create a gentle plaid.

He remembers this one with a particular fondness- it’s the shirt Rick wore the first time he visited Alexandria. Long hair, sad eyes, tense shoulders, and the prettiest blue making Negan want to unwrap him like a present.

It’s been washed since Rick last wore it over eight years ago, but Negan buries his face into it anyway, breathing in the clean scent and trying to find Rick in there somewhere.

In the end, he tosses his own unwashed shirt to the floor and buttons up Rick’s over his bare chest. Good thing Rick liked his clothes loose, because it fits just right.

It’s when he goes to grab his jacket off the bed that he sees it- the picture frame on the bedside table, shielded from his view by the stack of books. It’s angled toward the bed, and he can too easily picture Michonne lying there, trying to imagine the man in the photo in the empty space beside her.

It hits him hard, hard enough that he sinks down to sit on the edge of the bed, heart in his throat and eyes burning.

It’s Rick like Negan has never seen him before- happy and free, smiling open-mouthed and half-squinting at the camera like he’s confused about why anyone would want to take his photo. His hair is still long, his curls wild and tousled, strands looping over his forehead and around his ears. It’s clear enough to see the thin, faded scars underneath his right eye and across the bridge of his nose.

It’s a face he hasn’t seen in six long years, a face that every single goddamned day, without fail, he hopes will appear on the other side of the bars again, looking a little amused and a little annoyed like he always did.

He wants to take it with him. Wants something to help him remember the lines at the corners of Rick’s eyes when he smiles, the pink of his lips and the silver at his temples and the exact, perfect shade of blue of his eyes.

His cheeks are wet when he sets the frame back down, and for a long minute he sits there, letting the tears come because it’s been a long time since he’s let himself cry over Rick like this.

Michonne and Judith always insist that he isn’t dead. _He’s still out there_ , Judith tells him whenever Negan tries to say otherwise. _Mom says he’s still out there, so he is._

More than anything, Negan wants to believe that. He’s waited for so long in that godforsaken cell hoping they were right.

He leaves the photo because he doesn’t want to be the monster anymore. Doesn’t want to be the same man that threw Carl’s death in Rick’s face.

Sneaking over the wall is relatively easy- the guards seem to be occupied with something far more important than him, which would be a worrisome thought if he gave half a shit about this place. No, the only person he cares about hasn’t been here in a long time, so he’s fucking _gone_.

 _One day_ , he thinks as his feet hit the leafy ground just outside of the wall. _One day, I’ll come back here, and I won’t be alone._ _And they’ll let me in the gates like a goddamned hero._

He’s not going to be that same man that Rick put in the cell. He had years to think things over, plan his escape and what he would do when he got free. It’s a fool’s journey, but nobody ever told him he was the brightest bulb in the box.

“Rick Grimes,” Negan mutters under his breath as he makes his way deeper and deeper into the woods and further away from his prison, “I am gonna find you and bring your ass back home.”

**Author's Note:**

> It's time for a Rick/Negan unlikely friendship movie who's with me


End file.
